


some momentary solace

by the_ragnarok



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Coming Untouched, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Anguish, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Sexism, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, teen wolf cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:43:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5003461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harold doesn't react well to losing numbers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some momentary solace

**Author's Note:**

> Major thanks to talktothesky, who beta'd, Morin, who encouraged, and immoral_crow, who assured me that the emotional arc makes sense.
> 
> NOTE: this fic deals with Harold's angst after a number, who is a teenage girl, dies. Essentially, fridging. If you don't want to read that, I don't blame you! Get thee to the back button.

Monday is a bad day. On Monday they lose the number.

On Tuesday, it's business as usual. Mr. Reese foils a bank robbery and Harold gives the would-be thief a new identity and a one way ticket to Wisconsin. At the end of the day, he watches Mr. Rugowski take the first steps of his new life and wonders.

Harold has enough money that spending it all in his lifetime would literally be impossible, but he remembers a time when losing a fraction of his property would have spelled the difference between life and death, despair and hope. Heating in winter, food that nourished rather than simply filled, medication. Stealing from the rich does not concern Harold much, but Mr. Rugowski hasn't always been that discerning in his choice of targets.

At the end of the day, though, Rugowski's choices are his own. Not Harold's. By proxy, Harold saved his life from loan sharks’ hit men, and the life of the bank guard from Rugowski’s misfired bullet. Two lives in the hand are better than a theoretical dozen in the bush. 

On another thought, Harold opens websites for some Wisconsin-based charities. Even giving to them isn't without its own concerns. He can't donate too much at once without risking his anonymity, and even charities are run by humans, who often misuse power when coming by too much of it at once. 

Staring at the screen, he's struck by the urge to divide his fortune between all the charities in the world and move on. Assume a new identity, help Mr. Reese strictly with the technical sides of the numbers, or perhaps abandon them altogether, trust he did more good in the world than evil by giving what he had to others.

He lets out a breath. "That's moral cowardice," he tells himself. The words echo in the library, reminiscent of discussions he’d had with Nathan in other dusty rooms. "Anything strong enough to help is strong enough to harm. Throwing away responsibility won't do anyone any good."

Perhaps. Or perhaps that's inertia talking, and reluctance to give up his little luxuries. 

Harold closes his eyes and presses the heels of his hands into them. Sleep. He needs to sleep.

He hasn't slept well the night before. He doesn't sleep well that night.

~~

Their number was a teenage girl named Violet Heely. A surly girl, not popular, but not at the bottom of the pecking order, either. Mr. Reese took photos of her room, which was practically wallpapered in band posters.

"Doesn't look like a perpetrator," Mr. Reese said, and Harold replied, "They often don't." Mr. Reese gave a huff of muted laughter, acknowledging.

Harold's survey of her phone seemed equally innocuous. Her calls and texts were mostly to her parents. Her Friendczar page was a lot like her bedroom wall. 

Heely's emails were of more interest to him: she was apparently an active user in PROTOS, an open-source music editing software project. She had taught herself Python to add little modules to the user interface, and her style, though clumsy and obviously untutored, showed promise and - as important - the ability to read FAQs. It made Harold nostalgic enough to open an account himself and reply on some of the open issues.

Even so, he doubted any of the forum users were intending to do violence to her. She didn't reveal any personal details there, going so far as to choose a unisex handle and avatar. 

"We'll just have to keep watching," Mr. Reese concluded. Harold agreed.

~~

Wednesday and Thursday are among those days where Reese lags perpetually two steps behind their number, finding bodies as Mr. Hale systematically runs through collaborators in the arson that burnt his family alive.

Mr. Reese takes those days as a personal insult to his skill. Harold, who knows better than to argue with that sort of feeling, does his best to offer new leads to distract him.

They catch Mr. Hale seconds before he gets to the arsonist herself, a Ms. Argent. She shows no remorse at all over killing thirteen people, two of whom were children.

"Maybe we should let him get her," Mr. Reese murmurs. 

Harold exhales. "We have enough evidence. Give them both to Carter."

~~

The first hint of anything like conflict in Heely's life came on Sunday, a day after they received her number. A Friendczar status asked if any of her friends would like to purchase her tickets to an upcoming show, as she couldn't go herself. 

"So that's what all the yelling was about yesterday," Mr. Reese said. He was sitting in a park opposite her house, watching.

Heely's father owned a gun. Motive and means. Even so. "Killing your parents because they wouldn't let you go to a concert?" Harold said. "Seems a bit much."

"Kids today. You never know."

In hindsight, they should have known. How could they have missed it? 

~~

Friday is a quiet day, no numbers, and Harold spends it coding. Every time he starts a compilation, he opens the PROTOS forums. He shuts that tab down as soon as he opens it. He can't afford self-flagellation.

When his new firewall passes the first round of tests, Harold opens the PROTOS forums anyway. He bought the company who owns the domain shortly after Heely's death. Too little, too late, but he might as well do what he can: he adds a requirement for strict harassment policies to the terms of service. 

Re-reading all those threads that Heely participated in, details jump out at him, sentence fragments that he never even noticed on first read. _hack like a p*ssy_. _stop being a girl about it and document your f*cking changes_ , the automated censorship making mockery of its intentions. His new policy will likely do no better.

But what else can he do?

He knows exactly what he should have done: comment on her threads, start a conversation. Give her an opening of some sort, any sort. Find a reason to make Carter talk to her. Anything.

"Too late now," Harold says, and closes the tab. As he turns to leave, his eyes want to linger on Heely's picture on his wall. He doesn't let them.

~~

On Monday morning, both Heely parents left for work hale and healthy. Violet stayed in, supposedly sick. Mr. Reese watched to make sure she didn't start taking potshots at passers by.

"She seems to be having a quiet day in," Harold said. He watched her from her computer's webcam, her face screwed in concentration as she typed in furious bursts. In a rare moment of optimism, he added, "Perhaps she's rethought it all."

Violet pressed enter and got up abruptly. On Harold's computer, her Friendczar page refreshed itself. He read the first sentence. Numbness had already set in when he told Mr. Reese, "She's going to kill herself. _Do something._ "

Mr. Reese was up and running before Harold finished the first sentence.

~~

Saturday's number is simple. John talks him out of killing his wife in half an hour. Amazing, what being dangled by the ankle from a skyscraper window will do to a person.

Mr. Reese is satisfied. A life was spared. That is as good as it gets, for Harold.

He sits at his desk for long minutes, taking shallow breaths. Then he goes to the wall. He looks over his successes one by one, mechanically. This is what he accomplished. Mingled among them are his failures, and he takes those in, too.

 _He who saves a single life, saves the world._ What about he who, through obliviousness - no, worse. Through his own _stupidity_ allows a life to be lost? It's adding and subtracting infinities again. Calculus has always been Harold's least favorite branch of math. 

Enough.

Harold takes a deep breath. "We can't bring the dead back to life." He shouldn't have said that aloud. It's a bad habit anyway. There are ears everywhere; nobody knows that better than him. Still, it's a habit he can't shake, muttering to his computer while he works. He's had no company but his own for a long time.

Unbelievable. He'd allowed a person, a young girl with enormous potential, to die through his incompetence, and now he's feeling _sorry_ for himself? 

Slowly, Harold forces his clenched fists to loosen. He breathes. He goes back to his computer. There is work to be done. There is always work to be done.

~~

The gunshot echoed, tinny, through his speakers. Harold flinched.

Mr. Reese kept running. He'd been at the front door, half a dozen steps away. A world away. He stopped at the bedroom, and Harold heard grief in his voice as he spoke. "She got herself in the head. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault." Even frozen with shock, reassuring John was automatic. "I'll call 911. At least her parents won't have to find her like this."

As he waited for the ambulance to arrive, Harold read and re-read Heely's suicide note. It wasn't short. She'd saved it in her drafts, along with other posts discussing her despair; had Harold hacked her account earlier, if he'd troubled to actually look instead of assuming he knew everything there was to know, he might have gotten to her in time.

"I'm not actually killing myself because of a show," Heely wrote. She was more eloquent than Harold would've expected a teenage girl to be: she had a wry quality to her phrasing that made him suspect that he would have enjoyed speaking to her. It had been there all along, that quality. Harold simply didn't notice because she was using it to speak of things he didn't care about.

"I'm killing myself because my parents told me I couldn't go, and my first thought was to kill myself. This is the kind of person I am. There are kids starving out there, or kicked out of their homes because their parents are assholes, and I wanted to die because of a concert. My own entitlement makes me sick. You are all better off without me."

~~

Sunday is a welcome distraction. Their number makes a living through online fraud, swindling old folk out of their pensions. Harold gives John the day off and spends the day hunting and destroying each marker of their number's presence. When he's done, he returns the funds to their rightful owners. In a few cases where said owners have passed away and left no beneficiaries, he donates it. The mental health youth outreach will probably make good use of the money.

Of course, as he's giving it, he's struck by the memory of Heely's note. _Children go hungry, and I'm giving to a mental health outreach._ It's an ugly thought: suicide or starvation, dead is dead. It's not a competition. He donates to several soup kitchens, as well.

It's evening, and more ugly thoughts buzz through his head. Harold pushes away from the computer desk and walks to the back room where he sometimes sleeps.

In there, he opens the bottom drawer on the dresser and takes out a set of clothes and a passport belonging to Harold Sparrow. Sparrow's clothes are as drab as his namesake's feathers, and he himself is drab as well, a mousy little man who judges nobody and couldn't hurt a fly. Sparrow is devout in a vague, nondenominational way. He might as well have taken a vow of poverty, though he's not without connections, which he can sometimes motivate to fund important causes.

Harold has never assumed the identity of Mr. Sparrow. He has it ready, just in case. Perhaps today is Sparrow's day, after all.

"Tomorrow," Harold tells himself. He'll sleep on it. He'll think it over.

~~

Losing Heely was hard for John, as losing any number was, especially those who were young and innocent.

Responding to John's self-recriminations was easy. If the words rang hollow on Harold's lips, empty platitudes that they were, John didn't notice. "It wasn't your fault," Harold told him. That much, he did believe; surely if the responsibility for this belonged to anyone, it was Harold. "There was nothing you could have done. We can't save everyone. All we can do is our best."

"Shame it's not enough," John said.

In the safety of the library, Harold flinched, grateful Mr. Reese couldn't see him. "We've always known our best would sometimes fail us," he said, with a gentleness that surprised him. He didn't think he was still capable of it. 

Mr. Reese stayed quiet for a moment longer. Then he said, "Her parents are here. I'll check if they need anything."

Harold didn't reply. No answer was necessary. Instead, he went through his standard post number routine: document, analyze, learn. They would need to remember the possibility of suicide henceforth. If a person spent a lot of time online, looking at their draft folders might prove enlightening. Not all harassment took forms that he or Mr. Reese would recognize on sight; they would need to pay more attention to the number's account of events.

All of it was of little use now, but perhaps it will be of use again, for another number. The only thing to do with failure was learn from it, and move on; what other choice did Harold have, after all?

"And all the king's horses, and all the king's men," he muttered to himself as he typed.

"What was that?" Mr. Reese said in his ear.

Harold shook his head. "Nothing. Forgive me. You can go home now, Mr. Reese."

~~

On Sunday night Harold didn't make it home. He fell asleep at his work station in the library, reading Durkheim's work online. It provided no new insight. 

Monday morning opened with another easily solved number, an older man pretending to be a teenager online. When their number finds Mr. Reese instead of the teenage girl he'd been grooming for months, he swears to repent quickly enough. Harold writes some monitoring routines to ascertain that Mr. Venke will keep his word. 

A tiny bit of work to prevent terrible harm. Mr. Reese is satisfied at the end of it, as he should be. 

It's not that Harold _isn't_ satisfied, precisely. Certainly he recognizes that their action in this case was preferable to inaction. He simply can't bring himself to believe it matters in the larger scheme of things. Rationally, he knows it does. At the moment, though, his reason isn't informing his outlook. 

Mr. Reese notices. "Harold? Something wrong?"

He surprises himself by answering honestly. "Today isn't a good day for me, Mr. Reese. It'll pass." He permits himself a bitter laugh. "Everything does, sooner or later."

Mr. Reese acknowledges this with a sympathetic noise. "Let me know if I can help."

"I will." Harold closes his eyes. "Good day, Mr. Reese." It works as a dismissal.

He hasn't put Sparrow's outfit away last night. It's not taunting him: at the moment it's beckoning gently, offering. Harold has plans for his property in case of his death. He could trigger them at any moment. 

Sparrow runs a halfway house, or something almost like it. Harold would be a terrible fit for the job, and likely do much less good in it overall than he does in his current role. His mistakes would not be so deadly... no, instead they'd be decisions he never made at all; just as deadly, except he wouldn't know. Would it even be sparing himself, to abandon his monstrous power and the responsibilities that follow? Would he ever forget the numbers? What would he do if - when - he ran into a problem he can currently have fixed with less effort than batting an eyelash, a problem which Sparrow would find insurmountable?

No. Running away isn't an answer. Harold means to get up and pack the clothes away, only his limbs have stopped obeying him.

The foundations of this sensation has been with him all week. A feeling like he can't quite focus his eyes correctly, akin to looking at a 3D painting only to realize it's an accidental stain that never had any coherence to offer. Now it builds into an implosion, as though the world has been blown up large enough that Harold can see the pixels - finally, can see nothing but pixels. Tiny details losing all relation to one another, all relevance.

An arsonist who murders children. A teenager calmly shooting herself in the head. A man out to murder his wife. An old woman shivering because the money for her utilities bill was stolen. 

Wrong. The world is full of wrongs, endless and baffling, each of them a cataclysm in its own right. There has to be a pattern somewhere, something Harold can work with, something he can use to make it all _stop_ , but right now that seems like it would be cheating. Like he would only be doing it as a distraction, while all these lives shiver like candle flames in a draft screaming _Look at me, see me before I die_.

But that is also wrong. Nobody asked him to do this. This was Harold's own choice. They owe him nothing, all those lives, but he - he must owe them everything, surely. Everything he can do, everything he has, which is an awful lot. 

So it goes on and on, thoughts chasing their own tail, until a gentle chime startles Harold from his reverie. He has an email.

There's no sender address, and the subject and message body are empty. All there is is an attachment, a video file. If this were any computer but his own secured work station, Harold would suspect a virus. As it is, he opens the attachment.

It's a compilation of various recordings, he can see that much at once. Security cameras, most of them, and some webcams and phone cameras. Through the screen, Mr. Reese's face smiles at him. "Thank you," he says.

Harold remembers that. He could hardly forget. That brief, open look in John's eyes, the way they seem to glow. When John lets himself, he shines, and he in those moments he is breathtaking. 

The rest of the video is similar, though separate, incidents. Times John had thanked Harold for giving him this job. Gratitude that Harold might have scorned as unnecessary if it weren't so earnestly offered, if John weren't so unthinkingly generous with his regard. Harold hardly deserves it, which means he is doubly reluctant to pass it up when freely given.

The last segment isn't something Harold recalls. He wouldn't: the timestamp at the bottom of the screen dates it to a few hours ago. John is in his apartment, lounging on the couch and reading a book. He's barefoot and in his shirtsleeves, a brief smile lighting up his face as he reads something that amuses him. Then he lowers the book, looks directly into the camera, and winks. Probably the Machine turned on the LED, a polite little gesture to inform John that he was being watched. Apparently he didn't mind.

Harold sags in his chair. A second email pings, and Harold doesn't need to open its attachments to know that they are pictures of John shortly before he came to Harold's employ. His memory offers them up, and the sheer contrast is astounding. Even in pictures of a time when John was still physically in his prime, handsome and sleek, his eyes make all the difference.

Apparently, he _can_ feel as though he saved the world by saving a soul. He only needs that particular soul to mean the world to him.

Harold's hand sneaks to his computer. "Thank you," he says softly. It's silly: the physical server is nothing but an inanimate object. The being he's speaking to can hear him everywhere, and can't be touched. Even so, Harold finds it necessary to make contact with _something_ as he speaks.

"Harold?" 

He startles, throwing his chair back a little bit. Strong hands catch it, help Harold up. It's Mr. Reese, of course. Who else would come here in the middle of the night, unbidden?

Come to think of that, why _is_ he here? "Is there a problem, Mr. Reese?"

"Not that I'm aware." He steps slightly closer to Harold, a considering expression on his face. "Just wanted to make sure you didn't spend another night sleeping on your desk. That can't be good for your back."

"Noted," Harold says dryly. "Thank you for your concern."

Mr. Reese is looking at Harold's wall. His eyes linger just a bit too long on Heely's photo. "I guess I am concerned." The soft rasp of his voice is good for this time of night, calming to Harold's ears. "I want to check up on her friends, her family. A guy I knew in the army used to say suicide is catching."

The words tug on the last intact thread of Harold's increasingly fraying composure. "How could we have missed it?" he mutters, angry and futile. 

John's hands land on his shoulders, warm and firm. "I'd be more surprised if you had thought about it," he says, low and honest. "You're not the kind of guy who just gives up when things get tough. Or ever." There's a touch of humor in the words, and self-deprecation, as well.

Now Harold is doubly glad he didn't open the second attachment the Machine sent him. He doesn't think he could have borne, just now, the sharpened memory of how John looked when he was sick with despair.

Oblivious, John carries on. "I mean, if anyone should have brought the possibility up it's me." His shoulders go up a touch, wary at admitting a point of vulnerability. "You're not... it's not the way you think, that's all. You've never looked at a situation and thought it would be easier if you could just die and make it someone else's problem."

It feels as though the breath in Harold's lungs congeals into cold mud, like he's drowning in air. Just for a moment, and then he pushes forward, slow yet unstoppable. He's aware he's not thinking very clearly, but then, he doesn't need to be. If there is any possibility of a threat to the system, to _John_ , it must be examined and purged. 

When Harold suspects programs of viruses or flaws, he has tools to open them up and examine. Doing the same with John's psyche is tricky, but not impossible: Harold is treading familiar ground there, after all. He's had occasion to gently analyze John before, and he has a good set of mechanisms that he uses on himself all the time. Surely some of them could be effectively applied to John, as well. Very softly, he says, "Please sit down, Mr. Reese."

John folds at the knees, collapsing into the couch in slow motion.

Harold finds himself holding John's face, peering into his eyes as though he can see some physical manifestation of distress. "This wasn't your fault." His voice resonates, upheld by a firm belief that Harold hadn't been able to feel with regard to himself. "You did your best." If his fingers catch the hair at John's nape, stirring and smoothing through the strands, what of it? 

"It wasn't enough." John's eyes have closed. Is he hiding, or relaxing? 

Harold's thumbs rest right beside John's ears. He traces down the line of his jaw, feeling tension slip away as soon as he registers it. "You do so much already." That is the wrong line to take. John tenses up again visibly. "No, nevermind. Good or bad, it's done. No use dwelling on it."

"I've tried."

Harold can sympathize. "Perhaps a distraction will help."

John's eyes open a crack. "I've tried that, too."

Harold lets out a deep breath, then allows his hand to wander lower down, until he has two fingertips resting just over John's collarbone. "It might have been the wrong kind of distraction." He could leave it there, make this an offer of simple comfort. It might even help. 

No. Tonight is not a good night for cowardice. 

"Or perhaps I could offer some form of catharsis," Harold says, in a low voice. He swallows before adding, "I should mention that it won't be a selfless offer."

There's a shadowed smile on John's face, a knowing and complex expression. The darkness in it isn't bad, Harold doesn't think. "I wouldn't take it if it were."

"Does that mean you will take it?" At the phrase, Harold almost backtracks. 

But why should he? John is already nodding assent, shedding his jacket, opening up the lower buttons on his shirt. 

Unlike the Machine, John can be touched, here in the flesh: and so touch him Harold does, admiring the sleek lines of him with eyes and hands. "You really are exquisite," slips out of his mouth. He can't bring himself to regret it, not when it makes John shiver almost imperceptibly, his eyelashes casting long shadows on his cheeks. "Hush," Harold tells John gently. "Lie down, and give me a natural number between three and ten."

At the _natural_ , John raises his eyebrows at Harold, a welcome bit of levity. "Eight," he answers.

"Ambitious," Harold murmurs, but then he wouldn't have offered the range if he weren't confident in his ability and John's to achieve it.

"I'm guessing you don't mean belt strokes," John says.

"No," Harold says, "I won't hurt you tonight." He wishes he could have attached _Nor ever_ to the end of that sentence, but that's not a promise he can make at present; he can certainly say, _Not willingly, not intentionally,_ but what difference would that make?

On himself, when necessary, Harold uses pain. Correctly administered, he finds it invigorating, motivating. That won't work for John, whose tolerance for it honestly frightens Harold in what it signifies about John's history. 

No matter. There are other means. Harold sweeps his hands over John's body, giving every exposed inch of skin equal attention. John gives away only the subtlest hints of his preferences, tiny shivers or the slightest clench of his jaw. Harold takes note of each one: then he asks John to turn over and repeats the process over his back. 

Gentle pressure against his perineum makes John arch his back eloquently, so Harold thinks nothing of slicking his fingers and proceeding with internal stimulation. "Go up to your knees," he instructs softly. If he's right, he'll only have to circle his finger like _so--_

He withdraws it just as John throws his head back, crying out. His cock bobs red and hard, the head glistening, denied release. 

Harold presses a kiss to the small of John's back. "That's one." John's breath hisses out through clenched teeth.

Two and three are achieved by the same means. Harold is painfully aroused by John's responsiveness, his heart aching at the thought of John going without. John is capable of so much pleasure. It feels wrong to see him denied.

Well. It's not denying if _Harold_ does it. That is merely delayed gratification, as he has every intention of following through.

He shows John his free hand and tells him, "Lick." John doesn't attempt any theatrics, getting Harold's palm wet with broad, sloppy strokes of his tongue. Harold watches, mesmerized at the sight of John's bowed head, the flush on his face, his unquestioning obedience. "You're being very good." 

John shudders and rears back on Harold's fingers; Harold's quick tug to his testicles is the only thing keeping the exercise from ending prematurely. 

"That was four," Harold says, smiling. 

John groans and lets his head drop down on his folded arms.

Number five is Harold rubbing just the tip of John's now-leaking cock with his wet hand. Number six is leisurely strokes down the shaft, tightening on the base and twisting on the head. Number seven is John gasping and rutting into Harold's tight fist.

For eight and final, Harold means to take John into his mouth, but then John says, "Fuck me, Harold, please." The words come out choking, strained. 

As if there were any possible answer beside, "With pleasure." He guides John to stand up, then bends John over to lean his weight on the back of the couch. Harold comes to stand behind him. 

Even as John makes soft pleading noises under him, Harold takes his time. "Soon," Harold pants. His hands are on John's shoulders, his thumb dragging slowly up and down John's nape, smoothing over fine strands of hair.

It's not long before John relaxes enough to let Harold in. Harold thrusts in a controlled rhythm, pacing himself. He'd hate having to stop before he was done. It would throw off his entire--

Oh, who is he kidding? If his injuries force him to stop moving in the glorious perfection of John's tight heat, Harold may break away from his pacifism and shoot someone.

"More," John says, the barest hint of a whine in his voice. "Please, Harold. More."

With a low sound that might have been a snarl in another person's mouth, Harold exerts himself. He _will_ give John everything he asks for. 

John's reduced to incoherent moans by the time Harold wraps his hand once more around his cock. "You're beautifully shaped, all of you," Harold says, only barely finding breath to voice the words. "Come for me now, John, my dearest--"

John throws his head back with a wordless cry, tightening around Harold, milking him dry. 

Slowly Harold melts downwards until he can nose John's nape, kiss him there until he shivers. "Come along," he says once he can trust his voice not to crack on the words. "I have a bed in the back."

John mumbles something that Harold chooses not to hear. He pulls out and takes John's wrist, gentle but implacable. John makes no attempt to extricate himself, following Harold to bed with a bit of extra swagger that his walk lacked earlier. Watching it settles something in Harold's heart, even as the sight of John's firm backside inspires him to decidedly more carnal thoughts.

~~

Harold wakes up pleasantly sore in an empty bed. He takes a moment to stretch, then gets up. He stares down at himself, feeling an echo of his usual dismay at being sticky and dirty. 

It's a nice reminder. He can stand to leave it a little longer.

Walking back to his work station, he sees that Mr. Sparrow's clothes have been put away, and feels a swell of affection for John. Or should that be Mr. Reese, now?

He'll have to wait for the man to return in order to settle that point. Meanwhile, there is plenty to do. Harold sits down at his desk and opens his email. 

Among the most recent messages is a post notification from the PROTOS forums. Harold clicks it, recognizing the user name as one belonging to IndiDream, a Friendczar follower of Heely's. _A friend of mine died the other day,_ the message starts, and Harold tenses.

Then he reads it through. Harold may need to change his outlook on teenage girls altogether, because not only is it eloquently written, the compassion in the message humbles him.

 _I don't want anyone else thinking they're alone like Violet did,_ IndiDream writes. _If any of you need anyone to talk to, my inbox is open._

There are already a handful of comments. Two of them are trolls. Harold hacks into admin mode, deletes them, perma-bans the users’ IPs and sets a script to intercept further harassment. He recognizes another of the usernames in the comment, a guy who talked about _hacking like a pussy_. 

_I've been a d*ck,_ it says, _I should have been better, and I'm sorry. I'm going to be better, and I'm with IndiDream here. Anyone want to talk, my inbox is open, and don't be afraid of telling me not to be an *sshole._

It's sincere and well-meant, at least, though Harold thinks it could've done with fewer mentions of genitalia.

A steaming cup of tea is placed gently next to Harold's elbow. He looks up to see Reese looking at him, the corners of his mouth just faintly curved up. "Good morning," Harold says. "And thank you."

Reese's eyebrows rise slightly. "It's just tea."

"You know perfectly well what I mean." John's show of distress last night was a touch too timely, especially so soon after Harold saw him relaxed and happy in his own home. If Harold were thinking straight - if he were thinking at all, and not lost in his own hysteria - he'd have seen right through it. "Not that I don't appreciate it," he adds. "It was very kind of you."

The turn of John's mouth indicates displeasure, now. "Kindness has nothing to do with it," he says. "I wasn't being _selfless_." There's a touch of accusation in the word.

"Enlighten me, then," Harold snaps. "What interest could you possibly--"

He doesn't finish the sentence because John's hands are on his cheeks, John's eyes locked onto his; and he must nod, because then John is kissing him, intense and still so very sweet. 

"That enough interest for you?" John's voice is a lower rasp than normal. He accentuates his words with a pointed press of his thighs against Harold, displaying the evidence of said interest.

"Plenty," Harold says, his voice small.

At last, John's faint smile returns. "So what are we waiting for?" He turns to Harold's bedroom - possibly _their_ bedroom, now. He would hardly turn John away from it. 

As John stalks away, Harold watches him go. He feels a touch of vertigo again. So many good things in his life, such wasteful bounty. Who is he to accept all of them, when some have so little?

Who is he to deny a gift freely given?

He follows John like a man in a dream, raising nerveless hands to unbutton his own shirt.

John surprises him with a kiss to his temple, his solid form a comfort at Harold's side. "Let me," he says, laying Harold on the bed, touching him with reverence and skill. "This time, let me," and Harold closes his eyes and does.


End file.
